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Nine people have been confirmed dead after a metre-high tsunami
hit the Solomon Islands yesterday.

The wave struck the island chain following an 8.0 magnitude
quake, 340 km east of Kirakira yesterday afternoon.

A series of metre high waves crashed through coastal villages
leaving many with nowhere to hide.

"Some of those islands wouldn't be a metre out of the sea and a
wave of even 0. 9 of a metre would have a significant impact," said
Red Cross Disaster Manager Tim McInerny.

"People have nowhere to go, they will have to climb coconut
trees to try and get away."

The death toll is expected to rise as many others are missing,
and emergency supplies cannot yet be flown into the devastated
areas.

In Nela Village a muddy platform (pictured above) is all that is
left of a hut that was home to an elderly couple who are among the
dead.

World Vision's Dr Andrew Cutford told ONE News via Skype that
one of the immediate activities today was getting together as many
shelter kits as possible until more permanent buildings can be
constructed.

"We are also expecting to provide water containers, people won't
be able to access their usual safe drinking water, so we'll need to
be able to provide them with containers to be able to travel
further or access water systems set up by response agencies such as
Red Cross."

The Temotu Province is a remote region, and with the airport at
the biggest town - Lata - covered in debris, a boat is
the quickest way to get from Honiara to the disaster zone, but that
will take up to a day and a half. And once in Lata there is the
challenge of reaching the outer islands.

ONE News Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver, who is at the
airport at the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara, said officials
are desperate to fly out to assess the damage.

Dreaver said aid agencies are currently loading up supplies at
Honiara wharf so they can go up to Lata.

She said Lata Airport is expected to reopen tomorrow and the
Solomon Islands prime minister will be one of the first on the
ground.

She said the Red Cross has also set-up a tracking system, which
is going to be incredibly important, as there are 4500 people
displaced, and this will be one way to track where some of them
are.

World Vision said 700 homes have been damaged and the number of
people needing help was "growing by the moment".

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"The people that are on the ground in Lata right now have been
able to make contact with some of the communities around Lata and
we know that significant numbers of people have sought higher
ground," Cutford said.

"However, we haven't been able to make contact with communities
farther away from Lata and a number of hours boat ride away from
Lata so until that assessments been done, we won't know the total
impact."

The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) says four schools
have been destroyed by the tsunami.

PEZA said water supply to Lata is contaminated and has been
cut-off.

It said 13 villages around Lata have been severely affected, and
roads to the villages around Lata are covered in debris.

"Many of the homes, sadly, have been swept away and a couple of
villages have been completely swept away and that's why we need to
get people out there as soon as we can."

World Vision said it had made an assessment of two coastal
communities in the north-east of Lata, and found homes had shifted
5 to 10 metres and 90% had been damaged. Schools and churches had
also been badly damaged or destroyed.

Cutford from the charity said recovery work will continue
today.

"There has been this issue reported of a lot of debris in the
water supplies and water containers which has been worked on
overnight and today.

"Also there was quite a few animals, pigs and fish and chickens
that were killed so there's a job to clean that up to keep things
sanitary today," he said.

Community members had spent the night in the local church and
school, and work to build shelters will also go ahead today.

Dozens of aftershocks, including a magnitude 7 quake, followed
the main earthquake.

Dreaver said it had put locals' nerves on edge, as aid workers
struggled to reach the worst hit areas.